Canadian skater Olivier Jean suspected tampering

Canadian speedskater Olivier Jean said Thursday he always has suspected his skates were tampered with at the 2011 World Team Short Track Championships in Warsaw.

Responding to a Tribune story about allegations U.S. skater Simon Cho had followed his coach’s order to tamper with a Canadian’s skates, Jean told reporters in Montreal, “At the time we didn’t understand what happened. It was hard to explain. We had our suspicions there was sabotage but we had no proof.”

A transcript of parts of the interview and an audio file were provided to the Tribune by Speed Skating Canada.

The tampering charge is contained in the request for arbitration filed Tuesday on behalf of 13 U.S. short track skaters seeking to have the coach who allegedly asked for the sabotage, Jae Su Chun, dismissed from his role as head coach of the national team.

Speaking in French to journalists from the CBC and the Montreal newspaper, La Presse, Jean recounted details of an incident he said had been forgotten until Wednesday night, when the story was first published on the Tribune web site.

According to Jean, the Canadian and U.S. teams had shared a dressing room in Warsaw.

"It's difficult to imagine an athlete would have done this," Jean said, according to La Presse. "If there had been a plot orchestrated by the coaches, they should have been, in my opinion, shrewd enough to keep it among themselves and not involve athletes, which increases the chance for leaks (about the sabotage)."

Jean, 28, of Lacenaie, Quebec, said he discovered the problem with his skates at the start of the 5,000-meter relay, the last event of the 2011 worlds.

“We were in a position to win the world team championship title,” Jean said. “It (the title) was going to be decided with the relay. After the first lap of the relay, I saw it was impossible for me to skate. One of my blades was broken.”

Second in the “A” group overall standings going into the relay, Canada wound up with the bronze medal behind South Korea and China after finishing dead last in the relay. The United States men won the “B” group for fifth place.

Jean had skated on the Canadian 5,000 relay that won the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics.

Jean said he had trained with Chun briefly when the coach worked for the Canadian federation in the 2006-07 season.

“I always had a good relationship with coach Jae Sun Chun,” Jean said. “In Montreal, he contributed a lot. I enjoyed training with him, but it was brief."

Chun, 43, became U.S. national team head coach in 2007. His current contract runs through the 2014 Olympics.

U.S. Speedskating suspended Chun on Sunday, pending the results of an investigation by the New York-based law firm White & Case into charges of abuse against the coach filed last week by more than a dozen skaters.

Speed Skating Canada said it would have no comment on the case other than to acknowledge its awareness of the allegations involving Jean.

“Through arbitration filing documents in the United States, it has come to our attention that a member of the U.S. speed skating national team may have tampered with the skates of a Canadian team skater during the 2011 World Short Track Team Championships,” the federation said in a statement.

“As this is a legal matter before the courts, SSC, and its national team members, will not be further discussing this issue until the conclusion and resolutions from the court proceedings, or at another appropriate time.”

Jean sounded ready to move on.

“You can’t change the past,” he said. “I can’t waste energy on something that happened two years ago.”